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The Political Status of Puerto Rico: Independence or Statehood?
12:00 PM – Campanile Room, Memorial Union - Juan Manuel Dalmau Ramerez is a leader in Puerto Rico's independence movement and the Puerto Rican Independent Party (PIP). He was the PIP's candidate for governor and has served as secretary general and commissioner of the party. An attorney, Dalmau worked as a legistlative assistant under Senator Ruben Berrios, as a legal officer for Puerto Rican Supreme Court Chief Justice Jose Andreu Garcia, and as an advisesr to Senator Manuel Rodriguez Orellana. He earned his law degree from the University of Puerto Rico and has taught constitutional law at the undergraduate level.

Me the People: One Man's Quest to Rewrite the Constitution - Kevin Bleyer
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Kevin Bleyer, Emmy-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, hopes to end the constant bickering about the Constitution by simply rewriting it. With humor and wit, he drags our nation's founding document into the 21st century in Me the People: One Man's Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America. He takes readers to Greece, the birthplace of democracy; Philadelphia, the home of American freedom; and debates the failures of Article III with Justice Antonin Scalia. Kevin Bleyer also negotiated bipartisan consensus as a writer and producer for Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and Dennis Miller and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Banned Book Week, Constitution Day Speaker and part of the National Affairs Series.

How Artists Are Transforming the Narrative on Immigration and Equality - Favianna Rodriguez
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Favianna Rodriguez is a printmaker, digital artist and cultural organizer. She is known for her vibrant posters dealing with issues such as war, immigration, globalization and social movements. She also promotes the use of art in civic engagement and leads art workshops at schools around the country. She is directing CultureStrike, a national arts organization that engages artists, writers and performers in migrant rights and in 2009 helped found Presente.org, a national online organizing network dedicated to the political empowerment of Latino communities. Part of the Latino Heritage Month Celebration.

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - David R. Montgomery
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Geologist David R. Montgomery is the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, a mix of history, archaeology and geology that shows how soil use - and abuse - has shaped great civilizations from Mesopotamia to the Roman Empire, China to Central America, and the American push westward. A MacArthur "Genius" Award recipient, Montgomery teaches at the University of Washington, where he studies the evolution of topography and how geological processes shape landscapes and influence ecological systems. He will discuss his current work, a solution-oriented approach to the problem of global soil erosion outlined in Dirt. Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture Homo sapiens, wise man indeed. There's still time to live up to our name - if only we stop treating our soil like dirt. - David Montgomery

A New American Space Plan - Rocket City Rednecks' Travis Taylor
7:00 PM – Stephens Auditorium, Iowa State Center - No tickets - Doors open at 6:15 pm - Travis Taylor is the official ringleader of the Rocket City Rednecks, a National Geographic Channel series that follows five guys from Huntsville, Alabama - home to NASA's Marshall Flight Center and the birthplace of the U.S. space programs. Travis will show clips from the show and explain how they do it all. The Rednecks are rocket scientists with PhDs, and their weekend experiments combine a little hillbilly ingenuity with advanced engineering and physics. Travis has worked with the Department of Defense and NASA for the past twenty-five years, holds five degrees, is completing a second PhD in aerospace engineering, and is the author of A New American Space Plan. Engineers Week 2013 Book signing to follow.

Understanding the Mind and Brain - George D. Pollak
5:30 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - George Pollak is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Texas, where he studies how the brain controls behavior. His expertise is in auditory neuroscience and how we process sound, including how the brain computes from where in space a sound is coming. He uses bats as experimental subjects due to their high reliance on hearing. Dr. Pollak's many honors and awards include a Claude Pepper Award from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders and a Career Research Award from the National Institutes of Health. Pollak earned his PhD in physiology from the University of Maryland and has been on the faculty at the University of Texas since 1973.

The End of Money - David Wolman
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - A contributing editor at Wired and author of The End of Money, David Wolman shares how going cashless will affect the world, your wallet, and the retail, banking, and finance industries. His investigation into the future of money examined an array of virtual and alternative cashless currencies and technologies, including mobile-based banking systems. It also included a personal experiment of a year without cash. Wolman has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and Forbes. His other books include A Left-Hand Turn around the World and Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email. Greater Iowa Credit Union Business Lecture Series.

Who's Up, Who's Down and What's Really Going On - Eugene Robinson
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, MSNBC political analyst and author of Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America. He writes a twice-weekly op-ed column on politics and culture for the Washington Post and contributes to the paper's PostPartisan blog. In his three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been a city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper's award-winning Style section. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his commentary on the 2008 presidential race and Barack Obama's election as the first Black president. 2013 Chamberlin Lecture in Journalism

Islamophobia: The Challenges of Being Muslim in America - Moustafa Bayoumi
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America, which won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for Nonfiction. The book introduces us to seven twenty-something men and women living in Brooklyn, home to the largest number of Arab Americans in the United States, and uses their stories to break down stereotypes and cliches about Arabs and Muslims. A professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Moustafa Bayoumi was born in Zurich, Switzerland, grew up in Kingston, Canada, and moved to the United States in 1990 to attend Columbia University, where he received his PhD in English literature.

Genes, Race, Free Speech, Same-Sex Marriage and the U.S. Supreme Court - Panel Discussion
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Panelists will discuss recent Supreme Court rulings ranging from Marriage Equality and the Voting Rights Act to gene patents and affirmative action, as well as potential cases that may go before the court. Panelists include Drake Constitutional Law Center Director Mark Kende and ACLU of Iowa Executive Director Ben Stone and Dirk Deam, senior lecturer in Political Science. Iowa State Bioethics Program Director Clark Wolf will moderate. Constitution Day Event